


Skyhold Slept

by Pellaaearien



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dammit Solas, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I'd say Goddamn it Solas, Male-Female Friendship, Other, Qunari Bull, Trespasser Spoilers, but ya know, canon character death, feels train has left the station
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-30 12:02:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6423184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pellaaearien/pseuds/Pellaaearien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short I wrote to deal with my feelings after finishing Trespasser. Dorian returns to Skyhold with Lavellan after the events of Halamshiral. It's pretty much the worst day either of them have ever had.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Skyhold Slept

Skyhold slept. It was a time of night the Inquisitor once cherished, when the night fires were lit and the howling wind rose to challenge the watchful battlements. The stones and beams had a life of their own, creaking and groaning like old men complaining of their joints, and she would walk among them easily avoiding the guard patrol routes she herself had assigned as she conducted a watch of her own, keeping to the shadows. Ari had never been much for sleep, and it was the one time of day when she was allowed to be herself, not having to concede to any wishes but her own. Over the years she had explored the keep from top to bottom, delving into every nook and cranny, leaving no stone unturned. Now she would venture to say she knew more about their fortress than anyone alive, save one.

For ex-Inquisitor Lavellan, the silent night held nothing but ghosts; the towers empty, the watchfires guttering. She no longer felt the master of the keep, but a trespasser, a squatter scuttling amongst shadows of grandeur to which she had no right. It didn’t matter. She would abandon this place soon enough, the only home she’d ever known now making her feel manifestly unwelcome. It was fitting that she become the last ghost of Tarasyl'an Te'las, as the one who had thought to right the wrongs of the world from its walls. Sheer arrogance.

She shouldered open the solid oak door, making a great deal of noise as she traversed the stairs to what was once her chamber. Under normal circumstances Ari prided herself on being able to move in complete silence, but these circumstances were not normal; perhaps they never had been.

The magnificent, sweeping vistas of the Frostback Mountains were hidden now in darkness, the absence of the small city of encampment lights stretching to the horizon emphasizing their isolation to Ari like nothing else had. Had the awe-inspiring view been visible, however, the room’s sole other occupant would scarcely have noticed it. Ari suspected he was blind to everything around him, staring resolutely at the grain of her desk as though it held the answer to why he wasn’t drunk enough yet.

“I was beginning to think you’d abandoned me. Too.” Dorian hardly stirred at her approach, swilling the liquid remaining in his tumbler before downing it in one, glaring blearily at the empty glass as though it had personally betrayed him as he let it fall to the table with a quiet _thud_. The few candles she’d bothered to light cast deep shadows over the face of her friend, reminding her with an uncomfortable start of Felix, the way he’d been at the end of the year of hell. Yet another good man who’d died for her.

“No such luck, I’m afraid,” Ari replied, making no effort to infuse the statement with the levity implied. It was still the closest thing to a joke either of them had attempted since Halamshiral.

“And here I was wondering what pretext I could use to get this place annexed to my holdings.”

Ari approached the table, slamming the bottle in her hand onto its surface with satisfying heaviness before settling awkwardly into her chair. Even now, weeks from their last battle, she ached, deep in her bones. “It took me a while to find this. I was afraid someone had discovered it.” Dorian turned the bottle in his hands, squinting to read the label. He let out a low whistle.

“No wonder. You were able to keep this from me? From Varric? From –” he cut off his words sharply before finishing gruffly “from us?” Ari nodded.

I found it a while back, before the battle with Corypheus. I’d planned to break it out at the party but Josephine had already gone to such trouble and I didn’t remember until it was too late.” Dorian accepted her explanation without comment; she’d had a lot more on her mind on that particular occasion than exceptional vintages and had in fact retired to her quarters as early as possible without straying too far outside the boundaries of politeness. “I’ve thought about it a lot over the years but the time never seemed right. Now seems as good as any.” The mage was already uncorking the bottle, working it open with a clean, expert pop. He sniffed delicately at the sculpted neck.

“Ahh.” He met her eyes for the first time since she’d entered, his own red-rimmed and raw even in the dim light, shadowed recesses from which sprung occasional bright flashes. “You are indeed generous and benevolent.”

Even those words weren’t safe, stirring up connotations of the divine from which her mind shied away. “Glad you can still appreciate the finer things in life?”

Dorian raised a shoulder in half a shrug, already doling out two large glasses of the deep amber liquid. “It’s as good a sentiment as any.” They touched glasses, Ari meeting Dorian’s eyes this time and likely for the same reason. _You’re still here_.

Both took gulps probably larger than such a vintage merited, but then, that was part of the point, wasn’t it? Ari let out her breath first, resolutely putting down a tumbler that was much emptier than the one she’d picked up. She looked about the room, her gaze always catching in the same place by the door to her balcony. Dorian noticed her looking and put down his own glass.

“Shall we migrate the pity party? I’m sure there are a few corners of this drafty place I never found the time to get morosely drunk in.”

“No.” Her reply was immediate, though forced through gritted teeth. This was HER place. “I won’t let him beat me.”

Dorian gestured expansively, the most animated he’d been all night. “My dear, let me remind you of the terms of this evening. We ARE beaten. Here, for tonight, we are going to indulge, just this once, in the reasonable response to all this, which is to get blind, stinking drunk such that we hate ourselves more than we hate our lives tomorrow.” He took another swig of his drink, closing his eyes. “I make no demands upon you to be something you’re not as you make no demands upon me, unless you’re demanding I be more drunk.” He leaned back in his chair, surveying her. “Don’t make me regret taking this detour against my better judgment.”

Ari made shift to keep pace with his drinking, raising her eyebrows mildly. “I suppose I should have started with the best stuff, if I had to remunerate you. Now there’s nothing left.”

“This does go a long way towards ameliorating that debt, yes.” Dorian admitted, with another glance at the bottle. “As for the rest, you can repay me by joining me on the way down.” He raised what remained in his glass high with a salutation in Tevene that, if the words were unfamiliar, the sentiment certainly wasn’t. _To Hell!_

Ari returned the toast, holding out her glass to be refilled afterwards. Dorian hastened to slosh even more into their tumblers this time, his elbow knocking the ranks of empty bottles they’d already worked their way through that evening. The contents of the wine cellar, they had resolved, would not be left for the birds.

“Tonight,” Dorian reiterated, his northern accent grown thicker with drink, “we are going to surrender to the ancient and honoured tradition of _wallowing_. It’s only sporting to cave to the whims of _fortuna_ every now and again. Tomorrow we can go back to kicking her in the ass. Or perhaps next week sometime.” He paused to consider.

Ari smirked. “I’ll drink to that.” And so they did, many minutes’ steady going comfortably unimpeded until Ari went to reach for the bottle with the hand not currently holding her tumbler and succeeded only in knocking over several bottles. They both jumped as the upset glass crashed to the floor, the loudest noise they’d heard in some time. Ari stomped her foot on the floor in a motion that was more resigned than angry, pushing her chair away at an angle to the table in a subconscious effort to evade Dorian’s concerned gaze. “Dammit!” She folded her arms, cradling her stump away from sight. She wasn’t crying, she told herself. Just startled.

She heard the scrape of wood on wood as Dorian moved closer to the table, reaching across to tug on her hand. Her good hand. Her only hand. “Did you hurt-“

“No!” Ari yelled, slapping his hand away. Hands, plural. “Don’t touch me!” More precariously balanced crystal made the journey to the floor.

“I’m sorry,” Dorian said. His arms, now resting on the table, were still half extended as though they had a mind of their own. “I didn’t mean to –”

“I’m fine,” Ari said shortly, still refusing to look in his direction. In the silence that followed, Dorian quietly refilled her glass and then partook of his own, sipping calmly. A time passed, and Ari sighed, turning back to him. Nodding her thanks for the drink, she took a long swallow. “Sorry.”

After a pause, Dorian ventured, “does it hurt?”

Ari considered the question. It wasn’t pain so much as a sensation of _wrongness_ , the impulse to clench her absent hand into a fist almost overpowering. At times she swore she felt her fingers brush against something even as the stump hung uselessly at her side. Now that she focussed on it, phantom remnants of the excruciating pain constituting the limb’s final moments awakened, making her grimace. Back then, she hadn’t even been able to think through the pain, willing to do anything, anything, to escape the screaming torture, the worst pain she had ever known. Her current emotional state, however, was doing its level best to give it a run for its money.

“Not exactly,” she said at last. The answer seemed to satisfy Dorian, but he still laid a hand against her forearm, careful to leave her hand free to manoeuvre.

“Remember what I said, my dear. No pretensions in here. Let it go.” He waited. Ari took a deep breath.

“I’m an archer, damn it all!” The words burst from Lavellan all at once. _Was_ an archer, her brain corrected, less than helpfully. “Before I was Inquisitor, Herald, First, or anything else, I was an archer. And now his damned anchor has taken that away from me, too.” She touched her face, just under her left eye. Dorian’s eyes followed the motion. The shadows emphasized the presence of the scar which bisected the eye, something Dorian had never noticed until the blood-red tattoo that had covered it unceremoniously vanished. One day it had been there, such a part of Ari’s face he hardly noticed, then it wasn’t, and Ari herself carried in its place a new chip on her shoulder apparent to anyone who cared to look closely.

Ari noticed him looking. “He took my vallaslin, my blood-writing. I know you’re not familiar with the customs of the Dalish, but you must have seen slaves in Tevinter bearing them.” Dorian’s face twisted slightly, but he did not interrupt. Ari, arching an eyebrow, did it for him. “Oh, I’m getting to that. You see, receiving the vallaslin is a coming of age ritual amongst the Dalish. If you can’t bear the pain, you’re not yet ready to become an adult. The designs are based on symbols for our gods, and you choose one that is meaningful for you. It’s also a way to tell us apart from the flat-ears, the elves who choose to slum it in human cities.” There was such an edge of bitterness to her voice, Dorian knew there was some hidden meaning to the words, but he said nothing. Ari had never been this forthcoming, had refused to talk about what had happened to her face. “It shows we remember, it binds us together. It defines us.” She looked down abruptly, and Dorian knew she was hiding her bare face.

“Solas –“ the name twisted in her mouth, and she grimaced. “He always said the Dalish were misguided, that we were wrong, ignorant. We fought about it, often. To me, he was just a flat-ear apostate who thought he had all the answers. How could some dreams be expected to overturn centuries of tradition?

“One night, he took me out to that pool in Crestwood where we fought the wyvern. I was expecting – well. It doesn’t matter.” Dorian’s breast ached in sympathy. He knew, all too well. “He told me the Dalish were wrong about the vallaslin, that they were slave markings. The gods would use them to identify which slaves were theirs.” Dorian’s soft intake of breath was audible in the sudden silence. Ari deliberately avoided looking at him as she took a long draught. The mage was horrified. It was a good thing his countrymen knew little and cared less about elven custom, or they would probably tattoo the faces of all the elves, even the city ones, with their own designs, based on family crests perhaps. The thought made him sick.

“He said he knew a spell. A way to remove the vallaslin. He offered to do it for me, if I wished.” Her mouth was a thin line. “I almost said no. I was about to, but then I thought about it. Really thought about it. I thought about the Temple of Mythal and everything I’d learned. And, I loved him.” It was a ruthless admission. Dorian could see it tear into her on the way out.

His hands had been so tender on her skin, his face so close to hers, his eyes’ storm-grey depths still so mysterious as they gazed into hers with such intensity. She’d been sure the offer was a ruse, a prelude to something more… How right she’d been. She angrily cut off the train of thought.

“And then he left me there.” Her voice croaked harshly in her throat despite all the lubricant she’d been giving it. Dorian let out a muffled curse. Ari refilled her glass, awkward with a combination of drink and missing arm. Of course, had matters proceeded further, she shuddered to think… but they hadn’t, and thank the Creat-

Grabbing up one of the empty bottles, she threw it at the opposite wall as hard as she could. It disintegrated in a satisfying explosion of glass. Dorian startled at the sound.

“He even took my gods from me, the bastard.”

Dorian reached out to her again, like someone trying to soothe a wild animal. He knew what stung the most: her heart was also on that list, and he understood the feeling far too well. “Listen Inq- Ari. He’s been a right cad to you, it’s true. And if I can’t amend most of what he’s done to you, I can do this. The arcanists in Tevinter can do extraordinary things. I’ll coordinate with Dagna. You’ll have an arm again. It may not replace what you’ve lost but…”

Ari was drunk and sullen, but not so drunk and sullen as to outright reject the assertion made by her friend, perhaps her last friend in the world. “I’ll be able to shoot a bow again?” She wasn’t able to keep the slightest bit of hope from her voice; it succeeded only in making her sound sad.

Dorian finished his drink with a flourish. “You’ll arch as you’ve never arched before, my dear, or my name’s not Dorian Pavus. My countrymen aren’t good for much else, it’s true, but in this case I’ll exploit them mercilessly-“ he choked over the words, and Ari immediately understood. Words were dangerous.

“Dorian…” She was unused to providing comfort. She’d rarely been close enough to anyone for it to be required of her. But as prickly as the situation with her erstwhile lover was, they were also here to mourn. The one she’d been closest to, besides the man who now sat across from her.

“ _Fasta vass_ …” Dorian pinched the bridge of his nose. She knew it wasn’t a headache troubling him – yet – but was familiar with the method of holding back tears. “Guess this means it’s my turn now?” Finally looking up, Dorian attempted a watery grin that was tight in all the wrong places. Ari took his hand. It was an instinctual response to the pain she saw echoed in her friend, overriding her usual aversion to contact. Such hesitation was not present in Dorian, who had always been the most tactile of her acquaintances, and gripped her proffered hand like the lifeline it probably was.

Luckily, unlike her, Dorian didn’t seem to require any prompting to speak, as she was unsure of her ability to provide such.

“The damnable thing is that Blackwall was right. He was honest from the first. I figured, what the hell. Apart from the obvious gender issue, I’d always gone for the safe, the convenient. He was not that, so why shouldn’t he be different? And despite it all, I know what we had was real. It was real.” He paused, sounding a little like he had to struggle for breath. “And in the end, it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter, because losing his Chargers broke something inside him and I wasn’t enough to make him whole again.” Dorian drank, and Ari envied the ease with which he remained glued to her hand while he did so.

“You said something, afterwards…” Ari said gently, trying not to eye her tumbler.

“Kadan. He called me Kadan. That’s how I knew it wasn’t just physical, that it was something more.” She frowned, searching her memory, finding it easier to focus past the actual event, the body of her friend cooling on the ground. “I don’t think that was it…”

“Katoh.” It was barely a whisper. “It was our word, the word that meant stop, safety. I never used it. But right then it was the only thing in my head.”

Ari squeezed his hand, but said nothing. She could say how hard it had been, to lose Bull after losing Blackwall and Solas. How she doubted she could ever trust again after having believed in those three men, that they would never let her down. She could say how she missed his congenial dependability, the way that she felt a kindred spirit with him, the ability to do what needed to be done but also the constant struggle, to not let that be all they were. She could say how it wasn’t even a decision to save the dragon afterwards, not kill it. How the first, irrational thought in her head was how he had betrayed her within sight of the beast, and her first thought had been for _him_. How he’d never get to fight another dragon. She could say all those things, but didn’t need to. Dorian knew.

“Solas… taunted me about it,” she said at last, something Dorian couldn’t know. “He knew, somehow.”

Dorian started up, releasing Ari’s hand, which immediately went to her glass. “Vishante kaffas!” he spat, brushing the last few bottles to the floor. “I’m sure the bastard was quite smug, being proved right about the Qun. As if he had any moral high ground to speak from! _Fututus in mortus igni!_ ” Ari drank while Dorian railed, considering.

“I don’t think so…” she said at last, an uncertain cast to her voice. “It was too… perfunctory, too calculated. I think he was just saying what he knew would make me angry, so I wouldn’t try to follow him.” She looked longingly at the now empty bottle, continuing like she didn’t know she was still speaking. “Nothing he could say would make me any angrier than the fact that he wouldn’t trust me. He went on and on about how special I was when all along he knew this would happen. He’s so damnably certain he has to do it all alone because the alternative would mean actually admitting he was wrong for once. It would interfere with his aesthetic of sacrifice and maybe then he’d have to take _real_ responsibility for his actions instead of just playing a cosmic game of take-back.”

Dorian was looking at her oddly. “You know, Ari, Inquisition or no Inquisition, I think you’re the only person in all Thedas who has any chance at all of finding him. Leliana should just call her people back. You’re the one who knows how he thinks.”

Ari laughed at that, a sharp, barking sound. “Oh yes, because I’ve been so good at that in the past.”

“I don’t think either of us has to explain how matters of the heart can blind,” Dorian said, with a cheer that was at least partially unfeigned. Ari offered him the last dregs in the bottle, and smirked up at him as he downed them.

“I suppose not.”

“Listen, Ari…” Dorian began, abruptly uncomfortable in a way he hadn’t been all evening, “I am not accustomed to… especially not, well, if it must be said…”

Ari rose, doubly unsteady with drink and missing arm, and considered it a feat that she didn’t fall on her ass. “Dorian. Come here.” He did so with an alacrity belied by the tension she could feel humming in his muscles, though he nevertheless returned her embrace without hesitation. “I have never expected you to be anything other than exactly as you are,” she murmured, as he trembled now with a different kind of suppressed emotion. “But I’ll be damned if I let you go anywhere else tonight, or worse, the floor.” Dorian was half-curled into her now. She could feel her own breakdown coming but refused to let it overtake her, her mind surprisingly clear. “The bed’s big enough for the two of us, even with your northern sensibilities.” She said the word with a sneer, knowing it would get a laugh out of him, and was duly rewarded. Actually getting into bed was a messy affair, the less about which was said, the better. Being there together felt strange, like a puzzle whose pieces fit together but the picture didn’t match up. And yet, Ari couldn’t imagine being without him. She knew they would have to steal as many such nights as they could before the only way they could exchange mutual comfort was not by touch but by crystal.

“Ari,” Dorian murmured, on the edge of drunken stupor if not sleep, “thank you.”

“I know how you get cold,” Ari replied. Dorian huffed a laugh that tickled the hairs on the back of her neck. “Sweet dreams,” she whispered, knowing what waited behind her lids when she closed them would be anything but. It was part and parcel of her unique brand of despair that there was aught in her that welcomed it, even now.

:::

Silent feet stole through the predawn shadows as though dancing to music only they could hear. The boy had lots of practice sneaking now that he had to. The pair on the bed slept curled together, furled against the world and the nightmares that haunted them. He crept closer. It was good that they knew to find comfort in each other. He couldn’t always be with them, though their hurt was the loudest. He couldn’t make them forget, not any more, but he could still help them. He pressed a kiss to both their foreheads, watching the creases smooth as their dreams did too. Perched on the headboard, the boy proceeded to hum a lullaby Maryden had taught him; Andraste singing, not to her armies, but to her followers, freed but still festering, unfocused. Not loud enough to wake, but enough to slip into their quieted dreams so spirits would hear and keep away. He stayed even as the sun rose, because sun doesn’t always mean dawn, but someday, it would come. Dawn always will.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Dorian's Choice Remarks:  
> “Te futueo et caballum tuum.” – Screw you and the horse you rode in on.  
> "Fututus in mortus igni!" - Fuck off and die in a fire!


End file.
